2 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



of the life of these hunts must be briefly dismissed for want of 

 information, and that most will be made of the facts which 

 have actually come under my personal observation. In fact 

 I am not going to attempt a history, but rather to describe 

 the style of hunting which obtains in these two hunts, and 

 afterwards to continue with personal experiences of some other 

 countries. 



And first I must say something about the two particular 

 countries for the benefit of those who are strangers 

 to the district, and many of whom are under the 

 imjDression that in the north all the hunting takes 

 place among the collieries, and that foxes when dug 

 out are black from coal dust. There are, as a matter 

 of fact, collieries within the confines of these two hunts, a 

 good number in the North Durham and a few in the Braes of 

 Derwent; but collieries do not interfere with hunting any- 

 thing like so much as might be thoixght by those who have 

 not hunted in their vicinity, and there are many Midland 

 hunts which have a colliery district, and do not find that their 

 sport suffers therefrom. In the county of Durham, and also 

 in Northumberland, the coalfield lies near the sea, and the 

 further west one goes in either county the further one gets 

 away from the coal district. In South Northumberland the 

 coalfield extends some fifteen miles from the ccast, going 

 inland, and a few miles further in parts of Durham. Each 

 of the two hunts which have been named has a colliery 

 distrioti on its eastern side, and to the west is open 

 country, which is not. only free from collieries, but 

 so wild and tiiinly populated as to form a very fine 

 hunting area. The trouble is that in either hunt the 

 wild country is not very large, and in the Durham hunt it 

 has contracted very greatly since I first began to hunt. In the 

 sixties of last century there was not, for example, any colliery 

 in the Lanchester Valley, while mining operations were just 

 being commenced in the Dearness Valley, which is separated 

 from the Lanchester Valley by a formidable line of hills. The 

 collieries between Brancepeth and Durham were also non- 

 existent in those days, while the coal mines in the Bumhope 

 and liolmside district were probably not a tenth part of their 

 present size. But west of the road from Lanchester to Tow 



